 perhaps fifty of these whalebone whales are harpooned for one
cachalot, some philosophers of the forecastle have concluded that this positive
havoc has already very seriously diminished their battalions. But though for
some time past a number of these whales, not less than 13,000, have been
annually slain on the nor'-west coast by the Americans alone; yet there are
considerations which render even this circumstance of little or no account as an
opposing argument in this matter.
    Natural as it is to be somewhat incredulous concerning the populousness of
the more enormous creatures of the globe, yet what shall we say to Harto, the
historian of Goa, when he tells us that at one hunting the King of Siam took
4000 elephants; that in those regions elephants are numerous as droves of cattle
in the temperate climes. And there seems no reason to doubt that if these
elephants, which have now been hunted for thousands of years, by Semiramis, by
Porus, by Hannibal, and by all the successive monarchs of the East - if they
still survive there in great numbers, much more may the great whale outlast all
hunting, since he has a pasture to expatiate in, which is precisely twice as
large as all Asia, both Americas, Europe and Africa, New Holland, and all the
isles of the sea combined.
    Moreover: we are to consider, that from the presumed great longevity of
whales, their probably attaining the age of a century and more, therefore at any
one period of time, several distinct adult generations must be contemporary. And
what that is, we may soon gain some idea of, by imagining all the graveyards,
cemeteries, and family vaults of creation yielding up the live bodies of all the
men, women, and children who were alive seventy-five years ago; and adding this
countless host to the present human population of the globe.
    Wherefore, for all these things, we account the whale immortal in his
species, however perishable in his individuality. He swam the seas before the
continents broke water; he once swam over the site of the Tuileries, and Windsor
Castle, and the Kremlin. In Noah's flood he despised Noah's Ark; and if ever the
world is to be again flooded, like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then
the eternal whale will still survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the
equatorial flood, spout his frothed defiance to the skies.
 

                                  Chapter CVI

                                   Ahab's Leg

The precipitating manner in which Captain Ahab had quitted the Samuel Enderby of
London had not been unattended with some small violence to his own person.
